Really good report from a biker who has been riding around inside the "dead zone"

She isnt an idiot, in fact her dad is a nuclear physicist and she goes everywhere with a geiger counter, she travels alone as apparently any other vehicle in front of her would make the journey lethal (the dust thrown up would be massively radioactive)

She must have a lot of faith in her bike, as there is no phone coverage if she has a problem.

Interesting read I thought, its amazing how quickly nature is reclaiming the 2000 empty towns and villages desserted due to the radiation.


http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/ki.../chapter1.html

 

Nice one mate, i'm fascinated with chernobyl so will give this a read

 

I've seen this before, proper interesting stuff

 

I didnt realise before the number of places left uninhabitable, obviously I knew it was an enormous area, but an estimated total of around 2000 empty towns and villages is just mind blowing!

 

Ditto very erie. IIRC wasn't there a documentary about some people who still live on the outskirts? The reporter didn't want to eat soup or something made from vegetables grown in contaminated land?

 

Yeah read this years ago, always check for her updates. Her stories have been discredited as being exaclty how she portrays them but the factual info is correct and the photos are undeniably real. I love stuff like this

 

wow thats realy interesting read thanks for that

 

Some of the pictures arent her own, but she doesnt claim them all to be.
As far as I can see, its people with their own agenda who have tried to discredit her.

Clearly an inteligent and driven lady who's only quest is for the truth about the real condition of that part of the world now IMHO

Interesting interview with her here:
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/ki...l/volume4.html

And a picture of her for those curious as to what she looks like, its easy to see why the guards on the dead zone are so keen to shower her, lol

 

Didnt a PF member go to chernobyl? Tiff maybe?

it does send a shiver down my spine; i cant begin to imagine the chaos on the day

 

The site seems to be updated. I'll have another check through later as i love reading the Chernobyl stuff. It's mental how many derelect towns etc there are and when you see the pics it's very eerie!

On youtube you can get an old bbc documentary on it which is pretty good.

The poor firefighters and chopper pilots etc got proper fucked!

 

This bit had me pmsl

 

And of course the "biorobots" which is the term given to the 650,000 troops who were sent there to work on clearing the roof, using up their entire lifetimes resistance to gamma radiation in around 2 minutes of work.

 

aint been on that site for years - was proper interesting and i remember wasting my whole work day looking at that site

 

I'm not so sure on the bit in Red, but I totally agree with the green part

http://web.archive.org/web/200405160...4/kiddofspeed/


Around May 16, 2004, Filatova posted to her website that she was "being accused that it was more poetry in this story than reality. I partly accept this accusation, it still was more reality than poetry"; by May 24 she had removed the note.
On the first page of her KiddofSpeed website there is a dialog embedded by the owner of her host server pointing out that regardless of whether or not poetic license was taken, the site serves to "remember a forgotten region".

 

The poetry quote referred to things like where she said if she walked through the red wood she would "glow in the dark" I see no reason to discredit her for that, i enjoy her writing style and am inteligent enough to realise when she is using a metaphor.

 

Seen a documentary a while ago about this woman. Incredible stuff. I find chernobyl fascinating. Would love to go one day. Just to see how quiet it really is being in a place that big when its practically empty.

 

cool site

 

Very interesting indeed!!

 

I think it more refers to 'poetic license' but her translation is not quite right

I enjoy her style and stories immensely also, and there is no doubting her facts are correct

Nice article on the same subject here http://www.theage.com.au/news/russia...562907092.html
And here
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/06/1...obyl.html?_r=1

Interesting discussion here http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/w...comments/1026/ I particularly like the bit about ' I suspect you may be one of those guys thinking with his dick. The image of the hot babe on a bike blasting through a Mad Max radioactive zone ......"

 

very very intresting, reading through that you can sense what went on
and imagining how it is now very eerie place yet wildlife roam free
sad but very true

 

I cant spell his name but didnt louis theoru's brother do a documentary on Chernobyl a few years ago. I remember he had to have armed guards while wandering around the empty towns.

 

Was her DAD who went into the Hot zone and filmed the Cauldren .. He died within weeks ...

Plenty of good Docs about the place and Pripyat ... The best one (IMO) is the BBC doc that can be found on Screw-Tube .. Its pretty long tho .. Another is Horizon Inside the Sarcophagus.

Some Hi-Rez pictures before they filled the Cauldren in .. And the elephants foot.



Space-Man

 

I too was interested in Chernobyl and how nature was claiming back the toxic land,but i was also interested in how the winds blew the contamination over to us,i believe infecting parts of wales,Ireland and scotland.........

 

Human beings are one of the most sensitive creatures for radiation, IIRC there was a statistic that even a chicken can take 2-3 times the dose we can before it dies and for a cockroach its something like 100 times more.
So we'll be among the last animals capable of living there.

I wonder how badly the wolves etc are effected or not?

 

proper interswting stuff,you wanna search for the pripyat threads on 28dayslater.co.uk if you not seen them already,you can book a sight seeing holiday there
id love go check it out

 

Thats where a lot of 'Elana's' photos are reckoned to have come from, if you look at other peoples pictures from within the restricted zone they are almost identical but from slightly different angles......as tho they were all taken from roughly the same spots, ie an organised sightseeing trip

 

Makes sense, as if you are that interested in the area, you are going to go there anyway you can surely?

She has started including herself in the corner of a lot of the pics Ive noticed, presumably as a way to silence the "haters" ?

 

Nice find Chip. Cheers for sharing. Proper interesting all this.

 

Top link Chip, that should give me something to do with the rest of my day off !

Hard to believe the scale of the the place !

 

Never seen this before, I have a read later.

 

Yeah you can tell cant you some pervy soldiers who havent been paid or laid in a while.

"yes your clothes are contaminated"

 

they had built a brand new fun fair that had not been used now rotting away

 

It was for the labour day parade (big celebration over there) on may the 1st, but the reactor blew on april the 26th, so the parade never happened.

 

This has always interested me, there's some good video's on youtube of it, there is a few people living there, you know?

 

From what she says, there were 3500 people living there almost straight after, they either refused to leave or went straight back, but most of them are now dead, they were mostly old folk

There was an interesting comment from one of them along the lines of "I would sooner die here at home of radiation sickness, than die miserable and homesick somewhere else" so clearly they loved their homeland

 

yeah, i have seen an interview with an old chap living there, he was fully self supportive, growing potatoes ETC there, he was in his 80's IIRC.

 

Its one place id love to visit in my lifetime.

All that destruction caused by a simple human error

 

Yes most of her recent stuff is her own beyond any doubt and the fact she's informing people is fantasic and I love her website

BUT

If she was doing her own thing on a motorbike though you like to imagine she'd offer more insight than exactly the same pics you can take on an $80 organised trip?

Also when challenged over her story, the narrative from the original essays has changed substantially, if you go and look at one of those internet archive sites that holds webpages from the past you can see for yourself. I'm in no way saying the site isnt well written, fascinating, informative and downright fascinating as well as educational, but i very much doubt she made any of those motorcycle trips into the dead zone exactly as they are written on her website. There are plenty of other people with a great deal more information who also think the same

its an interesting discussion


If there was pics of her rollin' there'd be no hating I guess

 

I intend to go there in my retirement if I live that long.

i dont want to risk encouraging cancer at this point in my life, but give it another 40 years and I would have far less to lose and Im really interested in the place.


Well a series of human errors technically, but yes its amazing how much has been wiped out so simply!

I kind of find it reassurging though to see the extent to which it has returned to nature, its nice to know that when we finish fucking the planet up and all kill ourselves it wont be the end of the planet for other creatures too!

 

She has taken pics with her bike in too, kind of hard to get a rolling one though if she is travelling alone or with just a pillion as it rules out cool "bike to bike" motion blur arty shots

The way I see it, she road there for her own pleasure, then decided to put the story on the net to entertain and inform others, and in doing so she went and found relevant pictures to accompany the story she was telling as she didnt take enough pictures of her own as it was never her initial intention to give it as much coverage as she now has, but now she sees the power of her site, she puts more effort into taking pictures.

Doesnt really seem like a big deal to me that some of the earlier tales had a lot of pictures that werent hers.